A Child's Voice Calling Read Online Free PDF Page A

understand why yer don’t take that boy in hand, Annie.’
    Albert assumed an air of bored indifference and murmured something about babies’ rubbish, though Mabel burned with indignation and when tea was served she infuriatingly refused the fruit cake.
    ‘Why, what’s the matter with it, girl? Ye’ve always taken two slices before,’ snapped her grandmother.‘If there’s anything I can’t abide it’s a child who sulks.’
    ‘Well, I’ll leave you ladies to yer gossip,’ said Jack who had seen a couple of old drinking pals going past the window. Ignoring the tightness of his wife’s mouth he added, ‘If I’m not back by five, ye’d better get the Clapham omnibus from outside the new hospital down the road.’
    By which Annie knew that he would not be home till late.
    Autumn came in with cold, damp weather, bringing the Court children their share of coughs and colds. Annie grew more tired and depressed as the months went by and much as she disliked keeping Mabel away from school, she made the coughs and sneezes an excuse for demanding her elder daughter’s help on the dreaded washing days. Mondays were particularly miserable in wet weather when the sheets, towels and clothes hung draped over wooden ‘maidens’ in both kitchen and living room, keeping the air chill and moist. If the range fire was kept in all day it made the washing steam, causing the walls to stream with condensation. Even by getting up at six to light the copper to heat the water by seven and get the washing done by nine and mangled to flatness by ten, it would still not be properly dry until the next morning, sometimes not even then. With Mabel to mind Alice and Georgie, Annie was better able to get through a wet Monday, though she was exhausted by evening, and the coughs and running noses of the little ones sorely tried her nerves.
    ‘You’re my greatest comfort in the world, Mabel,’ she murmured as her daughter brewed a pot of tea for them both. These words were reward enough forMabel, though her mind was on Albert who was due home from school.
    Annie stirred her tea and went on talking, or rather thinking aloud. ‘If Jack doesn’t come up with ten shillings by the end of the week, I don’t know how I’m going to feed us all.’
    Mabel was dismayed by the anxiety in her mother’s face and voice. The use of Jack’s name instead of ‘dad’ or ‘your father’ had the effect of distancing him while drawing her into sharing her mother’s troubles. ‘Don’t worry, Mum, we’ll manage,’ she said reassuringly, though with no idea of what could be done if the money was not forthcoming. She knew from things she had heard at school that there were poor children who had not enough to eat, and went ragged and barefoot, foraging for whatever they could find by begging or petty thieving; but this was usually because one or other of their parents had become ill, or perhaps had even died. Mabel shuddered involuntarily at the very thought of losing her mother, the loving centre of her world. As long as she was there to kiss and comfort them all, the family was surely safe. And yet here was that same mother talking of poverty and not having food enough to go round.
    They were drinking a second cup of tea when Albert arrived home from school, his trousers torn and his hair unkempt.
    ‘Albert! We told you to stay with Lily Finch and her brother,’ said Annie, horrified at his appearance.
    He stuck out his bottom lip. ‘She kept ’angin’ about wiv daft girls, an’ Jimmy went to play football,’ he muttered in a surly tone.
    ‘Have yer been in a fight?’ demanded Mabel.
    He shuffled his feet. ‘Yeah, but I kicked ’em ’ard up the yer-know-what, an’ they let me go.’
    ‘Heavens, he talks like a guttersnipe,’ groaned Annie.
    ‘Why couldn’t
you
take me, Mabel?’ he asked reproachfully.
    Mother and daughter exchanged a guilty look; the washing hung damply and depressingly around them.
    ‘I’ll go over and see Lily Finch